Wetlands Store Huge Amounts of Carbon

The USGS project has captured eye-popping amounts of carbon — an average of 3000 grams of carbon per square meter per year (g-C/m2/yr) over the past 5 years. For comparison, reforested agricultural land, eligible for carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, socks away carbon at a rate much less than 100 g-C/m2/yr, says Gail Chmura, a biogeochemist at McGill University (Canada).

But they also release tons of methane which is worse than CO2. Scientists are searching for ways to mitigate the methane output to take advantage of the fantastic benefits of wetlands carbon storage.

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